Row80 update, 4/22/12

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This past week has been full of misfortune and woe, stark realizations, and progress.

On Sunday, two baby hummingbirds were taken by some bird of prey. I know about this because I had been watching Phoebe’s webcam. The recorded video from the attack stung my heart – though luckily the hawk had perched on the webcam and knocked it down, so you couldn’t see the predation. As you can see, she’s already rebuilt the nest, in another place. I think there’s a lesson for us all in this. Her human watchers were all aghast, but Phoebe? She got on with it. (There is another hummer webcam, Emma’s nest, if you’re interested. She has two hatchlings as of this writing.)

Then on Monday I learned that a dear friend’s 22-year-old son was killed in a one car automobile accident early Sunday night, the 15th. It was late, and he was driving through the Texas Hill Country near Driftwood, TX. Four other people have lost their lives on that particular stretch of road – something about a blind corner. There is nothing good to say about this circumstance. The funeral was Saturday.

Later on Monday I learned that my mom needed to have a breast biopsy on Tuesday. On Thursday the preliminary pathology report came back: it is cancer. She is 81, and a 16-year breast cancer survivor. It seems that this will be another easily-beaten cancer, though at this time we don’t know what she will have to go through. Last time it was a lumpectomy plus radiation. At her age, I hope they don’t prescribe chemo.

She is surprisingly unaffected by this diagnosis – she just wants the tumor OUT… NOW! The women in our family have a history of breast cancer, going back to her mother, who had a mastectomy. My 88-year-old aunt has had a double mastectomy, after having breast cancer twice. I imagine that my turn will come soon enough, within the next ten years if my mom and her sister’s experiences are any indication. I am accepting of this risk, and get my yearly mammograms.

I also had an echocardiogram and a 24-hour cardiac monitor this week, because I’ve been having palpitations for a couple of months. I don’t think that it’s any big deal – I’ve had them off and on for years – but a friend recently had a heart attack and needed to have a stent (she is a couple years older than me, and is slender!), so I took it as a friendly head’s up and decided that I’d better check in with a cardiologist for the first time in about four years. I won’t know anything for a week or so.

So – on to Row 80 and my goals. You’d think that I would have been knocked for a loop, but I wasn’t. The holter monitoring was a huge bother – I thought the itching under the tape was going to drive me insane – and I’ve been a depressed, but on Friday I came out of it and actually wrote a blogpost! Will wonders never cease…

Better Life Habits: I’ve been doing quite well in the mornings, actually making my bed before noon most days. (huge grin) I managed to walk five times in the past seven (helps with the depression), and the lights are off and the cabinet doors are closed most of the time. The kitchen sink has proven to be more of a challenge, but hey, I’m managing. I’ve spent too much time on Facebook, and when I’m depressed iPhone games are too easy.

Creatively, I have had a moribund week until Friday, when I wrote the above-linked blogpost. The muse came out and kicked me in the butt, and I tried to do some writing over the weekend, to no avail. Today I’m going to go for a walk, then sit down with the laptop and start pounding away. It will probably be shite, but that’s better than the total lack of progress I made last week. I’ve done nothing with Holly Lisle’s How To Think Sideways course, but it’s there waiting for me when I decided to actually do something about it. I haven’t been practicing the flute, but that may be changing soon. I haven’t had the inclination to knit, or work on my mask-making project, but I have been delving back into tarot again, participating at Aeclectic Tarot from time to time. I have a large collection of decks, and this week added a much longed for deck: the Tarot de Paris. I enjoy reproductions of historical woodcut decks, and this is one that I’ve lusted after for years, after just missing the winning bid on eBay a while back. I also have discovered some wonderful self-published decks, like the Incidental Tarot. I don’t know where my revitalized interest in historical and new tarots will lead me, but it makes me happy, so that can’t be too bad!

Social Media: I haven’t been on twitter (bad, BAD writer!), but I have written the non-row80 blogpost, and will have a writer meetup today at 2:30 with a couple of my writer friends. I’m SO looking forward to that!

I finally got an invite to Pinterest, and have some thoughts for image-collecting there. But for now I’ll leave you with an unattributed quote from yesterday’s funeral.

I’m sorry you’ve had such a rough week. Hope everything works out for you health wise and you find out what’s causing your palpitations. I discovered starch was giving me palpitations. I really didn’t notice it until had a heart issue when son was born, now pay more attention to my body signs. Good luck with your writing this week. Throw everything that’s been happening into a story, write it all and see what you come up with. Best wishes!

Thank you, Robin. Things are going better now, after a quiet day yesterday. Interesting about starch causing your palpitations.
Last night I was reading a book on Ho’oponopono (I think I spelled that right!), and the author was talking about *pretending* that something is true. So I’ve been pretending that I’m quite healthy… and tonight I noticed that I haven’t felt any palpitations all day. It also might be because I actually worked on the book this morning. Perhaps the stress of procrastinating something that I really want to do was the root of my anxiety.